Mullen: I back troop plan - now

Top military leaders said Thursday that President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan troop withdrawal plan is riskier than what they initially recommended, but they fully support his decision and do not think it will hurt U.S. efforts there.

“The president’s decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee.

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He and Afghan commander Gen. David Petraeus both said they stand behind Obama’s decision to order a larger, faster withdrawal.

“We’re talking about small differences here,” Petraeus told the Senate Intelligence Committee at a hearing on his nomination to lead the CIA. He said he had recommended delaying a withdrawal until next summer and then pulling out the entire 33,000-strong surge force. The president said he will bring home 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and reverse the entire surge by next summer.

“It’s within [our] ability to sustain the mission, focus on the objectives and execute,” Mullen said, adding that “the strategy had absolutely no chance of succeeding” if the president had bowed to political pressure to reverse the surge immediately.

Their comments, however, are likely to fuel Republicans’ claims that Obama’s decision was motivated by politics, rather than military concerns. White House officials deny that, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Agence France-Presse in an interview Thursday that “political sustainability” played a role in the decision.

“I think all of these things are arbitrary to a certain extent, including the military time line,” Gates said. “They’re a best estimate in terms of the military commanders, they’re a best estimate in terms of the president’s desire for success in our mission in Afghanistan, which also requires political sustainability here at home.”

Republicans also are concerned that Obama’s plan for a larger withdrawal than military advisers had proposed will threaten security gains from the surge.

Mullen and Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy, were summoned before the GOP-controlled House Armed Services panel to explain the implications of the president’s decision at a hearing announced hours before Obama’s prime-time speech on Wednesday.

“With the Taliban stumbling, we need a strategy designed to knock the enemy to the mat, not give him a breather,” committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said. He called Obama’s address “a campaign speech.”

Flournoy said the withdrawal plan doesn’t give the Taliban any hope.

“Any way you slice it, things are getting worse for them, not better,” she said.